Superdelegates won't have it easy this time

If the media (hateful word) are to be believed, the Democratic Party's 796 superdelegates have got their shorts (or panty hose, as the case may be) in knots over whom to support for the presidential nomination, Sen. Barack Obama, the front-runner, or Sen. Hillary Clinton, the fast-fading former front-runner.

It wasn't supposed to be this way. Being named a superdelegate was deemed an honor; it got you to the Democratic National Convention without the indignity of having to risk repudiation by pledging in advance to a candidate who might get shellacked.

It was freebie -- a plum piece of party patronage, like closing the gates at night on Hamilton Park in Jersey City, a job much sought after in the old days because the park has no gates.

Everyone wanted to be a superdelegate in years past. But those seats are reserved for the elected elite (governors, senators, representatives, mayors et al.) and party bigwigs (national and state chairmen and women). This year, however, some "supers" may feel a bit like Abraham Lincoln's description of the fellow who was tarred and feathered and ridden out of town on a rail. "If it weren't for the honor of the thing, he'd just as soon have walked," said Honest Abe.

This year this safest, most sought-after of political plums comes with some risk: the real possibility that the "supers" will be forced at the national convention in August to decide who's to be the nominee -- Obama or Clinton.

Whom to anger and alienate, in other words: women, the Emily's List and Code Pink crowd and the Clinton government in exile by backing Barack Obama or African-Americans, the thousands of new party shock troops on the college campuses and liberal reformers in general by opting for Hillary Clinton?

It could be a critical consideration in how some "supers" vote because many will have to face the voters themselves in their states or congressional districts this fall.

Now about those "supers" and how they came about. The whole notion of superdelegates -- with power to override the decision of millions of Democratic votes cast in state primaries and caucuses -- seems out of step with a party so politically correct that it insists convention seats be divided close to equally between men and women. The idea of superdelegates seems, well, undemocratic.

And it is, actually. But the "supers" came into being to remedy what party elders perceived as democracy run amok in the nominating process, particularly at the 1972 convention. That year, liberals, in an orgy of excess, expelled the party's strongest local leader, Mayor Richard J. Daily of Chicago; radically rewrote the party platform, and carried the convention into the wee hours of the morning, losing a national television audience in the process and crippling their already weak nominee, George McGovern.

The nominating process, the party's Washington-based establishment decided, needed adult supervision -- namely a contingent of sage elders with the power to undo any damage a runaway convention like the 1972 gathering might do.

It's not the first time party elders have taken things into their own hands to save a Democratic convention from its own bad judgment. In 1952, Sen. Estes Kefauver dominated the Democratic primaries, defeating even President Harry Truman. He was the people's choice. But rather than let the prize go to the erratic Kefauver, a coalition of Democratic big-city bosses used their muscle to give the nomination to Illinois Gov. Adlai Stevenson.

Stevenson lost. No Democrat had a chance that year. But Stevenson vindicated the bosses by mounting one of the most eloquent and farsighted campaigns ever run, as evident in collections of his speeches that year.

The superdelegates will face a much tougher choice this year if it all comes down to their decision. Obama and Clinton are credible candidates, unlike Kefauver. But the decision will be difficult because of the choice posed by Clinton and Obama -- between race and gender and even generations and between one candidate offering a proven past and another offering an uncharted and different future.

What will guide the "supers" in any such decision? In the best of all worlds, they will heed the wisdom of Edmund Burke, the most eloquent Irish voice ever raised in the British Parliament in explaining to his Bristol district why he'd voted in the nation's interest and not in theirs or even his own. What any elected representative owes his constituents, Burke said, is "his unbiased opinion, his enlightened conscience (and) these he ought not to sacrifice to you."

What are the odds the "supers" will follow the Burkean model? Not good, is my guess. More likely they'll do the smart, expedient thing and vote the way the folks back home voted. Why take a risk?

It's like the wise guys say: The race isn't always to the swift or the struggle to the strong. But that's sure the way to bet it.